Category: Gaia

The mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is a question that has long puzzled astronomers and astrophysicists. Estimates ranged from between 500 billion to three trillion times the mass of our Sun. A new study looked at globular clusters, groupings of a million or so stars surrounding the Milky Way. By measuring the velocity at which they circled our galaxy, as measured by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia Telescope, astronomers determined the Milky Way has a mass around one-and-a-half trillion times as great as our Sun.

A river of 4,000 stars has been detected just 330 light years from the Sun. This grouping is one billion years old, and has circled the outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy four times since its formation. Astronomers found the formation using the Gaia space telescope, operated by the European Space Agency.